Customizing RCOs/XMLs to Modify PS3 XMB Using Firmware Loader

I'm just wondering what other people have figured out so far. As is mods that run stable without crashing PS3. So far I've managed the following with PS3 USB Custom Firmware Loader and RCOMage:

1. To swap categories in XMB around

2. Edit almost all text such as category names errormessages, warnings, explanations etc

3. Also remove any of the crappy widely unused icons , eg life with playstation, memorycard utility ps2 .

These are fairly simple mods done with rcomage and notepad.

1. Swapping categories around is as simple as remaning category XML files in \dev_flash\vsh\resource\explore\xmb eg. swap names on category_music.xml with category_photo.xml and the categories will swap in the XMB

2. Editing on screen text is as simple as extracting RCO file with rcomage, go into text folder, open English.xml and edit the entries you want, eg

Put simply the entry "msg_game_setting_explanation" is the firmwares way of asking for the message to be displayed, depending on language selected on your PS3 it looks to the corresponding xml, in the case my PS3 is set to English its the english.xml it reads so it displays on screen the message "Adusts settings for games". We can justy edit any of the language xmls to display whatever we want onscreen.just edit, recompile with rcomage and replace in your usb firmware files.

3. Deleting icons is fairly simple too , Browse to \dev_flash\vsh\resource\explore\xmb and open any of the category.xml files with notepad , then just edit out references like this after Where it says [Register or Login to view code]

Thanks. Yes I wanted to post it in guides section but also wanted lots of people to see it and reply if they have figured out other things too. Its easy enough stuff so wasn't sure if it was worth putting in guides section really , if some who knew how to code a little program to remove icons and rename stuff that would be really cool, I wouldn't know how though

Edit: By little program I mean something that could extract the XMLs from the RCOs, edit using a simple GUI and the recompile

I know its old news but some people might not know about this, the more get involved the better, might figure out something cool.

I also changed "Game" category to "Homebrew", it looks cool.

And like I said in other thread I got rid of PSN category and added second game category, was hoping to get games to show up in that one while homebrew shows up in original game category which I renamed, at the moment everything comes up in both.

Also language conversions to unsupported languages are now possible by overwriting one of the other languages with custom entries. You could change it to a custom language with Slang lingo of your choice, for instance "Friends" can become "Homies", Sony errors can say "because Sony sucks".

Originally Posted by Senaxx

Is it possible to make an extra category next to game, and the others with homebrew. So you can have an extra folder ?

Homebrew
Game
PSN
PS1

I don't know yet what's possible, still experimenting!

At the moment I havnt really added a category, just moved network category over to PSN slot, and then ive moved game over to where network was and changed original game slot to be Homebrew category, it has same entries as game category at the moment but without gamedata ,memorycard utility, trophies,ps store and save game icons, They are still accessible through game category anyway.

Does anyone know if these xmls can be written to the actual dev_flash or are they one of the read only areas?

or would it cause ps3 to crash on booting without jailbreak as firmwares crc wouldnt match?
I wouldnt mind testing making a small change to one just to see if its possible but dont want to instantly brick my PS3, So will ps3 boot if for examlple an icon was removed from actual dev_flash?

Id say it should be ok as it seems stable , just not sure if there are writable areas? wouldnt want to half write a file and then discover it fails and leaves a corrupt xml behind.

Edit:Ok tried overwriting a xml on real dev_flash with a the same one using comgenies awesome filemanager, no go . tried deleting and then copying new one over but no joy, cant delete, possibly just safety built into the file manager, will try FTP next ,thought it said dev_flash was writeable, must check again.I think dev_flash2 is writeable AFAIK.

What we really need is another Firmware loader that also mounts Dev_flash2 and Dev_hdd0 to usb sticks, Basicaly if it could mount the 2 flash memorys to USB001 and HDD to USB002 that would be sweet.

Think about it, If these redirects were built into psgroove payload we would actually have custom firmware that boots every time we boot with jailbreak

I think if we can redirect BD to HDD,and Dev_flash to USB ,it should be possible to redirect HDD to USB in payload in theory. Then we could have a proper go at mounting a complete 3.15FW on 3.41FW, even if we had to use our own dumps at least people on 3.15 could upgrade and possibly still access their otherOS.

I've been playing around with the RCOs for a while now. One thing I tried was swaping page names. for example, clicking Power Options redirects to "Tool Menu". However, the system just freezes. I don't know if it's because the firmware doesn't have support for these functions (most likely), or I'm not doing something right.

Also, it's impossible (right now), to add/remove categories and/or icons (aka make otheros and debug menus appear), because they're store in /vsh/modules not /vsh/resources. The modules define what appear and where, while the resources store the actual images. The only way to change menu items would be to decrypt the modules.

What we need are the old PSP hackers who decrypted the old PSP firmwares and let them do their magic on the PS3 files.

Cool, hadn't tried that yet. Have you tried swapping them for options that are there somewhere, raher than locked things,for instance swapping power options with bluray options, just to see if the theory works first?

ya your right about old psp hackers, I would nearly buy Dark Alex a ps3 myself if he would make a ps3 custom firmware !!